


Entitled to Some Direction

by thatdamneddame



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, M/M, Misfits!AU, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 13:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4223850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't know when people are going to die and he doesn't have hypnotic boobs or power over milk and he can't turn invisible. All he has is the knowledge that people keep trying to kill him and that he has no way to stop Derek from dying. Again.</p>
<p>Or the Misfits!AU no one asked for</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entitled to Some Direction

**Author's Note:**

> Misfits!AU but, honestly, no knowledge of the Misfits universe required. Also, this is not how parole/probation/community service works in the USA, I can promise you that.
> 
> No graphic depictions of violence, but what does happen is canon compliant with both Teen Wolf and Misfits. Please let me know if I need to tag for anything else.
> 
> Beta'd by the wonderful prettyasadiagram who also put me out of my misery and told me how to end this thing. <3
> 
> Title from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, because I am the worst type of person.

“I don’t like hanging out with Derek.” Lydia sighs, and on anyone else Stiles would accuse her of sulking. But this is Lydia. “He gives me a headache.”

“I know what you mean,” Stiles tells her. “The guy’s, like, the world’s biggest Debbie downer.”

Stiles can remember being nine years old and completely in love with Lydia Martin. When he looks at her now—long hair pinned up in braids that Stiles thinks would look great with one of those German bar maid outfits—he remembers loving her with a single-minded devotion. But now he just sees a friend; he thinks that she is beautiful and intelligent and since he’s bothered to get to know her, all he wants is for her to be happy. Stiles wouldn’t make her happy. He knows that.

Lydia frowns at him. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh,” he says awkwardly. “Right.” He forgets, sometimes, what the storm did to her when it didn’t do anything to him. “I’m sure he’ll understand.”

She pulls a nail file out of her purse, a dismissal. “He better.”

Stiles leaves the locker room before she can kick him out. Part of him will always be a nine-year old boy. Part of him will always love her. It will always hurt when Lydia tells him to leave.

 

***

 

Derek is loitering by the dumpsters, sneaking a smoke with Isaac, Erica, and Boyd.

“Those’ll kill you, you know,” Stiles jokes. He still feels awkward around them, even after all this time.

Derek frowns at him and, wow, Stiles is batting oh for two today. “If you goring me with garden shears didn’t take, I don’t think smoking will.”

At the edge of Stiles’s vision, Isaac flickers in and out of sight. “You still don’t have it, man?” Stiles asks.

It’s fortunate that Isaac has so much pent-up anger to put into his voice, because it means that Stiles doesn’t even need to see his face when Isaac tells him, “No, man. I don’t.” It’s especially fortunate because Isaac still tends to turn invisible around people he doesn’t like, which means he’s nearly invisible all the time around Stiles. Still.

“What do you want, Stiles?” Derek asks before Stiles can offend anyone else. He sounds less openly resentful and more genuinely curious than he would have three months ago. Stiles counts it as a victory.

“Lydia can’t come to dinner tonight,” Stiles explains.

Erica perks up from her artful slouch against Boyd. “Can’t or won’t?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Derek tells her. Boyd bumps her gently with his elbow, like he’s trying to remind her to play nice. Derek turns back to Stiles and the look on his face tells him that Derek knows exactly why Lydia’s not going to be at dinner. “Tell her it’s fine. Whatever she needs is fine.”

Erica and Boyd are shoving at each other now, playful and a little flirty, and Isaac keeps complaining whenever they accidentally bump into him. Derek rolls his eyes at them, stubbing out his cigarette in the palm of his hand. “You need anything else?”

Isaac flickers back into existence long enough to tug at Erica’s hair.

“No,” Stiles tells him. “I’m good.”

 

***

 

They didn’t used to have monthly team-building dinners. You were meant to atone for your sins, become a better person, and then go home and not get caught by the cops the next time you decided to fuck up. Stiles is the son of the sheriff. He knows how this community service gig goes.

But Derek lies to them anyways and says he puts it on the county’s tab. Stiles hasn't told anyone the truth. Part of him thinks that Derek must really be that lonely. Part of him is glad for whatever keeps this ragtag group of super-powered young offenders from killing each other.

Sometimes Derek buys him an extra order of curly fries and Stiles thinks it means _thank you for keeping my secret_ s. It’s not a hardship really—Stiles has been keeping secrets his whole life.

 

***

 

“I think we’re meant to be superheroes,” Scott muses for the hundredth time. Erica throws a fry at his face, which is actual restraint from her.

“None of us can even do anything useful,” Allison gently points out, but she’s smiling the way she does around Scott. All dimples and soft eyes. It always makes Stiles feel like he’s intruding on something.

“Yeah,” Isaac agrees. He’s holding steady tonight as a solidly transparent. So far none of the other diner patrons have seemed to notice. “Stilinski’s only power is talking people to death.”

Isaac may be invisible 75 percent of the time, but when Stiles kicks him under the table, his aim is perfect. “What are you going to do, Lahey? Pretend you’re a ghost and haunt bad guys?”

Isaac shrugs. “I could rob a bank.”

Derek sighs like this conversation is physically paining him. “No one’s robbing a bank. No one’s becoming a superhero. You’re all going to do your community service and become productive members of society.”

Derek is a probation officer whose closest friends are three repeat young offenders. Derek has died twice in the past three months. Stiles would call him out, but he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

“I’d be a great bank robber,” Erica says, completely ignoring Derek. She gestures to her chest. “I mean, who’d arrest me.”

Scott blushes faintly and looks away. She has a point though; her boobs are literally hypnotic.

“I would,” Derek tells her pointedly, and Boyd must know something Stiles doesn’t because he laughs. “I would arrest you all if you committed a crime,” Derek barrels on. “Felony or misdemeanor. Powered or not.” Boyd’s still laughing and Isaac’s smirking and it’s starting to make the tips of Derek’s ears turn pink. Stiles is fascinated—he’s never seen Derek blush before. “And _there is no such thing as vigilante justice_.” Derek stresses the last part so much that Stiles has to wonder if there was a lot of vigilante justice happening in the last county he worked for.

“Sure there is,” Stiles disagrees, mostly because he can. “What about Batman?”

Derek practically growls, “This isn’t Gotham and we’re not the Justice League,” and Stiles’s heart goes pitter-patter. He files it away as something else not to think about.

“More like the Evil League of Evil,” Erica mutters, while Allison smiles at Stiles like she knows. Stiles worries, some days, that Allison got two powers and never told anyone. Maybe that’s why Stiles didn’t get any at all. He keeps that to himself though. It wouldn’t change anything.

“I still think we could be superheroes,” Scott says again, too wistful to be petulant, and this time it’s Derek who throws his fries at him.

 

***

 

Stiles brings Lydia a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie from the diner. Derek had insisted.

Lydia opens the door in her pajamas, her hair up in a headscarf, with a facemask on. Stiles understands, now, that Lydia letting him see her like this is more important than love—this is trust, as genuine and deep as Lydia knows how.

 They sit in her bedroom now and she pokes at the pie in its styrofoam container. “Was he mad?” She sounds bland, carefully interested. Stiles has been watching Lydia closely for long enough that he knows she’s hiding something.

“I think he understands.” Stiles sits at the foot of her bed and runs his hands over her one-thousand-thread-count sheets. “Erica was pissed, though.”

“Erica has magical boobs,” Lydia says, dismissive. “What else happened at dinner? Tell me.”

“Scott thinks we should be superheroes,” Stiles supplies. Lydia snorts. Even now, even still, the idea is funny. It’s not a real answer, but she doesn’t press for more.

They sit in silence while Lydia eats her pie and Stiles wonders how he can love this girl so much more now but want her so much less.

 

***

 

After, when the timer on her phone has gone off and Lydia has washed her face clean, they lay on her bed with a pilfered bottle of wine. Stiles doesn’t know when it happened, when they became this to each other, but it’s the one thing he’s grateful to the storm for.

It takes nearly half a bottle before Lydia asks what Stiles knows she’s wanted to ask this entire time. “Did he say anything about Jackson?”

Stiles shakes his head and hands her the bottle. “He’s not coming back. His dad lawyered him out of community service.”

“He won’t answer my calls,” Lydia admits. “Or my texts.”

What Stiles wants to say is _yeah, well, Jackson’s a douchebag,_ but he said that to Lydia once, right after the storm when everything was still bad and nothing made sense, and all it did was make her cry and yell “I know, _I know,_ but where is he? What the hell did they do to him?”

(They hadn’t done anything, but by the end of it Kate was dead and Peter was dead again and they’d all done something they couldn’t ever admit. By the end of it Lydia still loved Jackson, for better or for worse.)

“He’s probably just embarrassed,” Stiles tells her. Stiles wouldn’t be embarrassed. If you wanted—if you really wanted to—you could manage some pretty fucked-up shit with the power over dairy. But Stiles would never tell Jackson that, because Jackson might want to and Lydia would never forgive Stiles if he got her shitty boyfriend killed. Even if he did go on a dairy-fueled murder rampage first.

Lydia passes the wine back to Stiles and pulls her comforter up to her chin. “He’s going to die again,” she says. She doesn’t mean Jackson.

Stiles doesn’t know when people are going to die and he doesn’t have hypnotic boobs or power over milk and he can’t turn invisible. “I know,” he tells her, though. It’s a cold comfort, knowing things the old-fashioned way.

 

***

 

There’s a guy named Matt hanging around the community center building on Monday. He has a camera and bright blue eyes and an easy disposition that Stiles instantly distrusts.

“Maybe I have a fifth sense for evil,” Stiles hisses, zipping up his orange jumpsuit and hoping Matt is where they left him, chatting with Allison and Isaac by the vending machines. “Maybe that’s my power.”

“Dude,” Scott tells him. “He’s harmless.”

Scott turns into a chocolate lab when he hears loud noises or gets a bit too excited. Scott knows nothing. But Derek says the exact same thing when Stiles corners him by the dumpsters.

“He’s doing a story for his college newspaper,” Derek explains. “ _Your dad_ gave him the okay.”

“Should we really have him hanging around when Isaac seems to always be invisible around douchebags?” Stiles tries.

Something solid his Stiles in the arm. “I’m only invisible around you, asshole,” comes Isaac’s voice from nowhere. “It’s like my body is trying to save me from stupidity or something.”

Derek takes another drag of his cigarette and pretends he’s not laughing.

 

***

 

Lydia and Derek, for the most part, keep a respectful distance from one another. Stiles isn’t sure he could do it—if Lydia saw his death he thinks he’d want to know. It’s always better to know. It gives you something to fight against. It would give him time to make sure his dad was going to be taken care of without Stiles there to make sure.

But Derek doesn’t ask and Lydia doesn’t say and Stiles wonders if today is the day that someone’s going to accidentally kill Derek again. If today’s the day his power wears off or it’s too much and he can’t heal in time.

Stiles doesn’t even like Derek; he shouldn’t worry this much.

 

***

 

Matt takes pictures of the graffiti before they try and scrub it from the walls. He takes pictures of Lydia and Allison drinking water instead of working and of Erica trying to spray Isaac with the hose and of Scott and Stiles and Boyd, the only three who seem to think that they need to actually do any community service during their mandated community service.

“What do you think?” Stiles asks Boyd. “He’s creepy, right?”

Boyd looks down at Stiles. “We’re not friends,” he reminds him. And then, “It’s your obsession with him that’s creepy.”

Scott laughs so hard that he has to dig his inhaler out of his coveralls. But they must be friends because Boyd sits with Scott, hand on his shoulder until he’s breathing steady again.

Matt snaps a picture of them, Boyd and Scott leaning on each other and Stiles standing three feet away, arms crossed like he’s the outsider. Maybe, Stiles thinks, he is.

 

***

 

Stiles isn’t as good at waiting out the inevitable as Derek.

“Do you have any idea when?” he asks. They’re on lunch, eating together because Allison and Scott are making out in one of the locker room bathroom stalls and Derek’s sneaking a smoke again with Erica, Isaac, and Boyd. Stiles doesn’t know where Matt is. He doesn’t really care.

Lydia shakes her head. “We couldn’t stop it even if I knew.”

He doesn’t ask if that’s a philosophy or a fact. Stiles is still going to try and stop it from happening at all. Instead, Stiles tells her honestly, “Your power is pretty shitty,” because it is.

It makes Lydia laugh and Stiles smiles. It’s nice—Lydia hasn’t really laughed since the storm.

 

***

 

Over dinner, Stiles’s dad asks, “How’s the community service going, son?” He asks every night and every night, for the most part, Stiles lies.

He shrugs and tells his dad, “We spent the day washing graffiti off the public pool building.”

Today, Erica hypnotized them a free lunch while Derek pretended not to notice. Today, Isaac stayed visible for most of the day, even around Stiles. Today, Allison didn’t break anything accidentally and Scott didn’t turn into a dog because he heard a loud noise and Matt the creepy photographer still thinks that photographing a bunch of old-enough-to-know-better-but-too-young-to-care deviants is a great way to spend his time.

Derek didn’t die today. Stiles is still powerless to stop it when he does.

“I’m thinking you should have the graffiti deviants wash off the graffiti,” Stiles adds. The silence in the house is oppressive most days now. “We’re just the trespassing, petty theft, speeding, and fighting in public deviants.”

“Uh huh,” says his dad. “Maybe now you won’t look to expand your talents any.”

“Maybe,” Stiles agrees. He doesn’t see the point of graffiti now that he’s helped kill someone, but his dad doesn’t need to know that.

 

***

 

On the weekend, Stiles and Scott go to the dog park three towns over.

“Run!” Stiles yells, unclipping Scott’s lead. “Be free! Make safe choices!”

The soccer mom with the toy poodle gives him a dirty look, but Stiles ignores her. He’s taking his best friend who is occasionally a chocolate lab for a walk. This is his life now. Soccer mom will just have to get used to it.

 

***

 

In the early days, Allison used to break everything—sunglasses and silverware and the zipper on her coveralls. She broke her steering wheel once. Derek had to crash her car to give her a cover story, but her dad still didn’t talk to her for three days.

It was because of Allison that they all found out. It was Allison who drew Scott in for a kiss and broke his arm instead. It was Boyd who healed it. Two of them, at first, with powers. And then when they all came back the next day there were more.

“Watch this,” Erica had laughed, shaking her blonde hair out and unzipping her coveralls to show a hint of a lipstick red bra. Stiles doesn’t actually remember what happened next, but Isaac has pictures. Isaac, who everyone thought had just skipped community service that day. Isaac who they couldn’t find for a week before he reappeared, in the middle of the locker room, eyes wide like he couldn’t believe he was real.

The next day, Jackson exploded all the Yoohoos in the vending machine when Scott and Stiles hid his real clothes.

The day after that Lydia wouldn’t stop screaming.

Allison had to break some more things after that, but at least this time she meant to.

 

***

 

Stiles is the sheriff’s kid, so he’s usually the first one to show up in the mornings. He brings Derek coffee and sits in his office, not talking, until Scott or Allison or Lydia arrives and Stiles has a reason to leave.

It used to be awkward at first, when Derek was just this deputy with the sheriff’s department and Stiles was the sheriff’s deviant son. The first thing Derek had ever said to him was, “I hope you’re not expecting any special treatment,” and Stiles had laughed and told him, “Why? I’ve never gotten any before.”

But now Stiles brings coffee because he accidentally gored Derek with garden shears that one time, and Derek pretends not to know that he’s using the locked county Wi-Fi instead of the free guest one like he’s supposed to.

And now sometimes Derek says things like, “Maybe you didn’t get any powers because you’re the only one who doesn’t need any,” in between one sip of coffee and the next. And Stiles doesn’t know what the hell to say to that—because it’s not true, because he and Derek aren’t even friends—so for once in his life he doesn’t say anything at all.

 

***

 

“Allison’s been acting weird,” Scott says one afternoon. They are picking up trash along one of the county roads. Derek’s in his cruiser, nursing a hangover and listening to NPR. Up the road Matt is taking pictures of Erica as she tries to shove as much garbage as possible down the front of Isaac’s jumpsuit.

Stiles spears an old coffee cup and some dead leaves. “Weird like she can now bench press a city bus and also you, her boyfriend, is sort of complicit in her aunt’s murder and definitely helped hide the body?” They should probably all be in therapy, Stiles thinks. Even before the storm messed with them.

Scott shakes his head. “No, we’re dealing with that. Different weird. Not acting like herself weird.”

“Maybe the honeymoon phase is just over, dude,” Stiles suggests. Sometimes Scott turns into a chocolate lab; Stiles thinks that’s pretty weird. “Or maybe she’s just working up the courage to tell you she’s allergic to dogs.”

“Very funny,” Scott says, trying not to laugh.

Stiles throws a clump of wet grass at his face so Scott won’t talk about feelings anymore. Down the road Allison and Lydia lean together, whispering secrets.

When Stiles was twelve, his mom got sick, but she died in a car crash before the disease that was slowly turning her insane could kill her. Stiles hasn’t stopped acting weird since. Allison, he figures, gets some time.

 

***

 

Sometimes, because Stiles is the sheriff’s son and being a delinquent means he lost most of his car privileges—Stiles is the last one to leave too.

Derek’s softer at the end of the day, tired around the edges, less guarded now that he’s spent a day around people and presumably remembers the motions of acting human. Stiles can remember Derek when he was still in training, back when Stiles was still in high school. He was charming in a way that meant no one ever got close and Stiles used to think that was vanity, but now he knows that Derek has never really been good at people. Now he knows that Derek would die for the people he loves, even if he couldn’t come back.

Stiles knows that at the end of the day, Derek emails his sister, who’s in South America, on one of the ancient computers in the office because he doesn’t have a computer at home. Now Stiles has seen Cora Hale smiling at the Pyramid of the Sun and he’s seen Derek’s eyes and mouth go soft, almost sweet, with pride.

He doesn’t mind staying late. It’s only moments like these when Stiles can admit to himself that he likes spending time with Derek more than anyone else.

 

***

 

“Jackson’s leaving,” Lydia says when Stiles finally makes it to her house.

She’d called about an hour before and Stiles had to wait until his dad left for his overnight shift before coming over. Technically the whole community service crew has curfew, but only Stiles is the son of the sheriff.

“Oh,” he says. “Lydia,” he says, and pulls her into a hug.

Stiles hates Jackson with the fury of a jealous child—he’s slimy and pretentious and a coward and Lydia has always loved him more than he deserves. But all Stiles will ever want is for Lydia to be happy.

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “You’ll be okay.”

She is trying not to cry in his arms and Stiles’s heart breaks, just a little.

 

***

 

Lydia’s parents are divorced and are so wrapped up in hating each other that neither can be bothered to actually raise their child. Her room at her dad’s is bigger than the one at her mother’s, most likely because her mom had bought her the nicer car. It’s decorated in soft mints and blues, professionally done, and Stiles doesn’t think it suits Lydia at all.

“I tried to call Allison,” Lydia tells him. She is wearing a BHHS lacrosse sweater that’s too big for her. It’s probably Jackson’s. Stiles hopes she burns it. “But she wouldn’t answer her phone. She finally texted to say that she’s out with Matt.”

“Creepy photographer Matt?”

“She has the worst taste in men.” Lydia sniffs. Her boyfriend has power over dairy and is skipping town rather than deal with the consequences of underage drunk driving. Love is blind.

“Hey now,” Stiles protests. “Scott’s a catch. Well, he’s great at playing catch. And fetch. And leading the blind.”

Lydia very nearly smiles. “Shut up, Stilinski.”

Stiles will take it as a win, for now.

 

***

 

Neither Lydia nor Allison show up for community service the next day.

Derek frowns at them all, but he doesn’t ask.

 

***

 

Stiles isn’t really sure how community service would have worked out if it weren’t for the storm. They’d all known each other before, tangentially. Beacon Hills High School was a medium size high school, about fifteen hundred kids, so they’d seen each other in the halls and at lunch, but they didn’t actually talk. Erica and Isaac and Boyd stuck to each other and Stiles stuck to Scott and Lydia and Jackson didn’t have time for anyone but themselves. Allison is relatively new to town, but he way Allison and Scott look at each other tells Stiles that no matter how she and Scott met, she would always become a part of their lives.

He thinks he and his dad might be getting along better now, but he knows he wouldn’t count Erica or Isaac or Boyd as begrudging friends.

“We’re not friends,” Boyd tells him when he brings it up.

“We don’t even like each other,” Erica says.

“For a given definition of like,” Isaac adds. He smiles, sly, and Erica punches him in the arm. It takes less than a second for it to get out of hand. It takes Derek fifteen minutes to break it up.

But Stiles knows he’s right—he’s always right about these things. They’re friends now. Forever. Whether they like it or not.

 

***

 

“Don’t you want you know?” Stiles asks. He is drinking the largest coffee money can buy and loitering in Derek’s cramped office, waiting for community service to begin.

Derek is typing away at his computer, writing an email to his sister probably. He comes from a large family but he only ever talks about his sister Cora. Stiles knows enough about the world to have some idea of why. His mom died when he was young; it’s the only reason he doesn’t ask.

“Know what?” Derek doesn’t look away from the screen. Doesn’t look at Stiles at all.

Stiles throws a paper clip at Derek’s face. “Don’t you want to know what Lydia has to say? Because let me tell you, community service is going to get even more awkward if you two keep avoiding each other.”

“It’s not summer camp, Stiles.” Derek sighs like Stiles is being ridiculous. Stiles isn’t being ridiculous; he’s pointing out a fact—a fact Derek wouldn’t notice otherwise because his whole life is an awkward social interaction.

“But don’t you want to be ready?” Stiles presses. “Don’t you want to stop it? I mean, what if it stops working?”

Derek shrugs. There’s something he’s not saying, Stiles knows him well enough to know that. He just wished Derek trusted him enough to tell him the truth.

 

***

 

The fact of the matter is: Scott is a terrible dog. He’s largely unhousebroken, likes to chase cars, and is scared of thunder. And the thing is, he can’t remember a single thing about it.

There’s human Scott, who’s been Stiles’s best friend since elementary school. Who was trespassing with him that day their luck run out. Who likes guacamole and Call of Duty and Allison Argent. They’re like brothers, really. Stiles loves Scott.

But it’s only when Scott’s a dog, gnawing at the kong Stiles bought as a gift—Scott didn’t think it was funny until he turned into his fuzzy counterpart, and then he fucking loved it—that Stiles has the courage to say, “If Derek dies, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself.”

Scott wuffs, tail happily banging against the floor, and Stiles reaches down to scratch behind his ear. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have the courage to say that to Scott’s human face.

 

***

 

Allison shows back up to community service with Lydia in tow. Derek doesn’t even acknowledge they were gone. There’s nothing to say really—Jackson’s gone now and he took all of their secrets with him. His jumpsuit is still in his locker and Stiles still has that video he shot on his iPhone of Jackson, in a rare good mood, showing off by levitating cheese slices.

They all know what could happen if someone found out; Jackson was there for that. There is nothing left to do but trust him. There’s nothing left to do but let Lydia grieve and let Allison be there for her friend.

The funny thing is they almost all have powers now, but none of them have been more vulnerable.

 

***

 

The first time Stiles saw Kate Argent, she was sitting on Derek's desk and playing with fire.

They hadn't told him about their powers yet—young and foolish and all of them with issues about authority that trumped how they all clearly hated each other. Erica and Isaac and Boyd had been in community service before, were already friendly with Derek, but he was still their parole officer. He still had power over them. They’d all kept quiet by mutual unspoken agreement.

But there is this woman sitting on Derek's desk, flames licking at her fingertips, and Derek looks sad and he looks scared but he doesn't look surprised.

When she sees Stiles through the glass she smiles. "They’re cute," she says to Derek, “your little wards.” She closes her hand and the fire goes out. “Do you think they got anything special in the storm?”

And Derek is scared; Derek is terrified; Stiles can see it in the way he white knuckles his chair, the way he holds his jaw, the way there’s something like real emotion in his eyes. Derek is terrified but he looks away from Kate just long enough to lock eyes with Stiles, to shake his head, exactly once.

Derek is terrified and Kate is laughing, flames licking at her hair now and Stiles isn’t brave yet, so he runs.

 

***

 

Matt takes pictures of Lydia and Allison and Erica in the sun sorting recycling. It’s one of those days, late in summer that feels like spring even though it’s almost fall.

“Okay, I might be crazy,” Stiles says, “but is Allison transparent?”

Scott puts down his bag of soda cans. “Dude. Not cool.”

Isaac shakes his head. “I thought you liked Allison.” Which is bullshit because Isaac doesn’t even like _Stiles_. He has no room to judge.

But that’s not what Stiles means at all. “I mean, unless my power is x-ray vision. How cool would that be? Just call me Kal-el, you know.” Isaac and Scott stare at Stiles with matching scrunched expressions. “What I _mean_ is look at Allison. Is it just me or can I see that stop sign _through her head_?”

They all stop what they’re doing and look over to where Allison’s sitting. She’s smiling at something Lydia’s saying, and Erica’s laughing along despite herself. There’s a breeze and everyone’s hair sort of whips around and if it weren’t for the bright orange of their hand-me-down community service coveralls they’d look like any other group of girls spending an afternoon in the park.

But then Allison turns to wave at Scott and it’s not Stiles’s power coming in—Allison’s face blurs, her porcelain skin translucent like in movies, fading between scenes. Isaac, Scott, and Stiles say nothing. There is only the sound of Matt’s camera, Erica’s laugh.

For the first time in his entire life, Stiles is lost for words.

 

***

 

They only reason they haven’t all killed each other yet is Allison.

The one person that none of them should know is Allison.

 

***

 

It takes a week for it to come out that Kate is Allison’s aunt.

“We used to be close,” Allison whispers, huddled in the locker room with Scott and Stiles and Boyd, hiding and waiting. “But my dad and her had a falling out a couple years ago. Something about my grandpa. I don’t know. My parents don’t tell me anything.”

“But what does she want with Derek?” Boyd asks.

Allison never gets to answer that question. There is a scream—too loud and too long to be human. Stiles is out of the locker room and halfway down the hall before he even thinks about it.

Somewhere, in the heart of the community center, Lydia screams again.

It doesn’t matter that Kate is Allison’s aunt. It doesn’t matter what she wants with Derek. It’s already gone too far, and Stiles understands now that he’ll do anything in his power (or lack thereof) to stop it.

 

***

 

Lydia taps her carefully manicured fingers against her water bottle—Evian, because even in community service Lydia Martin has appearances to maintain. “Allison was the first to have her powers present,” she says at last. “Maybe this is next. For all of us.”

Stiles spares a short, brutal moment to be thankful that the storm left him with even less than he had before.

“But how do we stop it?” Scott asks, presumably, the universe in general.

Stiles has a more important question. “Is she dying?”

Lydia’s fingers still. She cocks her head, considering, and purses her lips. Stiles wants to snap at her to hurry the fuck up with her omens of doom, but he knows these precious seconds won’t change anything if the answer is yes. Lydia hasn’t been wrong yet. Even before the storm, Stiles knew you can’t stop death.

At last, Lydia admits, “I don’t know.”

And that’s maybe the worst answer of all.

 

***

 

Scott waits until after community service to tell Allison. He does it in private, just the two of them. For that, Stiles will be forever thankful.

 

***

 

Kate’s plan never made much sense, but Stiles didn’t think anyone would much appreciate it if he pointed it out then. He doesn’t think anyone would appreciate it if he pointed it out now. It doesn’t change anything anyways.

She takes Jackson. It ends bloody. In the end, that's all that matters.

(In the end, all Stiles can really remember is the blood.)

 

***

 

Because Allison is just as stubborn as the rest of them, she shows up to community service, smiles, and says, "It's fine, guys. Don't worry about it."

Stiles can remember her choking back sobs, her body mostly burned, as Boyd tried to heal her on the community center floor. She was fine then too. They're all fine, this group of misfits. They don't really have any other choice. But _this_ , Allison fading away, there's nothing fine about that at all.

"We'll figure it out," Scott promises, the way he always does about things he can't control, jaw set and a fire in his eyes. "You'll be okay."

Allison stops smiling, but some of the tension in her shoulders lessens. After all, Scott's never made a promise he couldn't keep.

 

***

 

Outside of community service, though, it's still like they're strangers to each other.

"Isn't that Erica Reyes?" Stiles's dad asks, barely glancing away from the cans of soup he's price comparing. Stiles looks just in time to see her, mane of blonde hair and skirt that’s too short and heels that are too high, walking past the canned food aisle.

His dad watches him for a moment, notes his non-reaction. “I thought you guys were friends now.”

Stiles shrugs and puts the soup with the lowest sodium into the shopping cart. “Friend _ly_ , maybe. Friend adjacent. I’m not going to invite her to my birthday party any time soon.” The last part’s a lie; Erica would be great at a party. In fact, Stiles would invite every single person from community service to his birthday party. Even Derek. Even _Jackson_. Definitely never Matt, though. Seriously, fuck that guy.

“Well maybe you should try making new friends,” his dad says.

Stiles takes their cart and starts to push it away from Erica—who likes comic books and b-grade horror movies and let Stiles borrow her VHS copy of no-CGI Yoda Star Wars. “Don’t you want me hanging out with people who aren’t on probation? Like, people who are good influences and stuff?”

His dad shrugs. “Maybe they could use some new friends too.”

From the next aisle over, Stiles can hear Erica laugh. He doesn’t really know what she’s like out of an orange jump suit, away from Isaac and Boyd and Derek, all three of whom she has wrapped around her little finger. He doesn’t know how she gets along with her parents or when her birthday is. But he knows what she looks like when she cries and he likes how she smiles when she’s proud of herself.

No matter what happens to them when community service is finally over and they all go their separate ways, Stiles will never forget her. Always be glad he knew her.

It’s not friendship, exactly, but Stiles wouldn’t trade it for the world.

 

***

 

Lydia skips out on the next group dinner. Matt doesn’t.

“Why did you even invite him?” Stiles asks Derek. They’re squished into the corner booth, elbows and thighs touching. Scott and Allison and Matt are on Stiles’s right, Isaac and Erica and Boyd on Derek’s left, with them in the center, acting as a buffer.

Matt coughs uncomfortably from where he’s perched at the end of the table. “I’m taking pictures of your community service, and you guys are having dinner with your parole officer.” He holds up his camera like maybe Stiles isn’t so sure on what a photographer is.

Erica chomps down on one of her fries like she’s trying to prove a point. “Yeah, Stilinski, don’t you pay attention?”

Stiles valiant attempt at kicking Erica under the table is blocked by Derek with a hand on his leg. “Behave.” Derek glowers at him.

Stiles can see Erica mouth, “Yeah, Stiles, behave,” but Derek’s hand is on his thigh and Stiles is having a hard time thinking about anything other than that.

Because Matt could give Jackson a run for his money in the douchebag Olympics, he snaps a picture of them and then one of Erica’s smug little grin. Under the table, Derek gives Stiles’s leg a gentle squeeze, before he pulls his hand away entirely. It should feel like a warning but instead it feels like a promise.

“All of you,” Derek adds, eyebrows an impressively flat line, “ _behave_.”

None of them do, but that’s okay.

 

***

 

Stiles has never told anyone this—and if he can go to his grave without ever telling, he'll be a happy man—but he kissed Derek once.

They don't talk about it, which is fine by Stiles. Derek is moody and too old for him and deeply, tragically sad. In the past three months, Derek has been murdered by an ex-girlfriend, murdered by his ex -girlfriend’s crazy power-wielding accomplice—Accomplice? Friend? Girlfriend? Stiles never did quite figure out why Jennifer Blake came to town in the end—and murdered by his crazy uncle who thought he'd sold out family secrets to a pretty face. Stiles even murdered Derek once, just a little, entirely on accident. Derek would make a terrible boyfriend.

But Stiles kissed him once, when everything was still bad and Stiles was the only defenseless one in a storm of nonsensical violence and kissing Derek had seemed like the only thing to do. He was probably going to die, anyways, so why have regrets.

Except Stiles didn't die and he doesn't regret it and they've never spoken about it. Sometimes, Stiles wonders what it would be like to kiss Derek slow, soft, without blood on their hands or smoke in their mouths. He thinks it would be pretty nice. He's not brave enough to find out.

(He still doesn't know why Derek kissed him back, holding on to Stiles tight enough to leave bruises that Stiles traced for weeks. He doesn't know why Derek hasn’t warned Stiles away, when he knows for a fact that when Erica tried the same thing her first go around with community service, Derek had pulled her off instantly, had had told her _never again_.)

 

***

 

“You should give Matt a chance,” Allison says after dinner. They’re loitering around Roscoe—because on group dinner nights Stiles actually gets to use his jeep—and figuring out who is giving who a ride home. Stiles has a slice of peach cobbler in a takeout container for Lydia again, courtesy of Derek.

Derek rolls his eyes. “How about I take Erica, Isaac, and Boyd, and then you three can have your little heart-to-heart without us.”

Isaac sniggers and Stiles is so, so sad that he’s been getting better control of his power lately. It always made him so viciously happy when Isaac would accidentally disappear because it meant that Stiles didn’t have to look at his stupid louche face.

“It’s okay, big guy,” Stiles shouts after them, as they all disappear into Derek’s stupid mom mobile. “I know you have a lot of feelings underneath all that leather.”

Stiles might be going crazy, but he thinks he sees Derek almost smile as he starts his car. He’s definitely not crazy when Derek nods at Stiles as he drives away.

“You really should give him a chance,” Allison says again, totally ruining Stiles’s moment. “He’s a really good photographer.”

“Sure he is,” Stiles agrees, climbing into his jeep and ignoring the truly masterful pout Scott is working up to. “I’m not saying that he’s not a good photographer. I’m just saying he gives me the heebie jeebies and is probably evil.”

In the rearview mirror, Stiles can see Allison smile fondly at him, as if he were a small and adorable child instead of someone who is very obviously pointing out the evil elephant in the room.

“He really is okay,” Scott says, because even though he hates how much time Allison has been spending with him he’s able to divorce that from how he actually feels about the guy.

Stiles ends this conversation, which is clearly going nowhere, the only way he knows how. “You’ve never even seen Star Wars; you don’t get an opinion on things.”

In the backseat of the car, Allison laughs. And if Stiles pretends that he can’t see the headlights of the cars behind him through her head, then everything feels okay.

 

***

 

Lydia is painting her toenails and watching a _Say Yes to the Dress_ marathon when Stiles shows up at her house, peach cobbler in hand.

“He called today,” Lydia explains. “They’re sending him to London, so I’m throwing myself a one-night-only pity party.”

“Fair enough,” Stiles tells her and settles in.

He doesn’t tell her, “Matt was there, so we couldn’t talk about Allison.” He doesn’t tell her about Derek’s hand on his thigh; how every day it gets harder not to think about their one-time kiss. He doesn’t mention that Allison’s skin is like gossamer now—someone is going to notice soon and all of their covers will be blown.

It can wait until morning. Right now, being Lydia’s friend is more important.

 

***

 

It was sunny, the day that Stiles accidentally gored Derek with a pair of garden shears. That’s what he remembers most. It was sunny and no one was trying to kill them and Stiles was confident that if he just _focused_ then maybe he could figure out his power once and for all. He bet it was something cool like telekinesis or whatever Magneto’s power was. It had to be, he could feel it.

They were sprawled out in the grass, none of them really working. Derek was wearing his mirrored aviators, a surefire sign that he was hungover and unfit to supervise anyone, let alone community service. In a blatant misuse of town resources, Erica and Boyd were tying rubber gloves together to make a rope so they could hog-tie a napping Isaac.

“I bet I’m good at it,” Stiles says, idly cutting a leaf in half with the shears. “That’s why I don’t know I have it yet, because I’m so good at controlling it.”

Scott had laughed. “Yeah, buddy, I bet you’re the best at telekinesis ever,”

“You don’t even have fine motor control with your hands, what makes you think you have it with your brain,” Derek grumbled from just behind Stiles’s left shoulder

Stiles had spun, startled, because he thought Derek was still slouching against a tree pretending that he wasn’t napping on duty. And then the shears in Stiles’s hands had ended up in Derek’s gut. Derek’s blood, warm like the summer sun, pooled on Stiles’s hands, on the cool grass at their feet.

But Derek would go to amazing feats to have the last word—walking away mid argument and bringing up old fights just to prove he’s right—so he sits in the grass and coughs up blood and tells Stiles that he shouldn’t ever be allowed around sharp objects, potentially telekinetic or not. And Stiles is so achingly relieved that Derek is alive, that his ripped-up gut is stitching itself back together and Derek is going to live to snark another day, that he laughs.

 

***

 

They’re sorting recycling when Scott says, “She doesn’t care that she’s fading away.” He says it like a secret, like he’s ashamed that this is a problem he cannot solve. “I keep trying to talk to her about it, but she doesn’t want to.”

“Maybe she’s just freaked. Like she’s in denial or something. The seven stages of grief and all that.” Stiles used to have a list of the seven stages pinned to his bedroom wall until his dad quietly threw it away one day when he was at school. Denial followed by anger. Anger followed by bargaining. Stiles has never seen Allison angry before.

“She’s not _dying_ ,” Scott says and then he’s gone, morphed into a chocolate lab with a fat belly and a waggly tail, running as far away from this conversation as he can.

Erica gives Scott a scratch behind the ears and lets him out of the community center and into the bright light of Beacon Hills in the afternoon. Stiles sighs and picks up the soda can Scott dropped. Just another day at community service, then.

 

***

 

The only reason being arrested by his dad isn’t the worst day in Stiles’s life is because his mother died when he was twelve and he’s been getting arrested by his dad ever since.

He didn’t mean to get Scott involved too, but Scott has always been at Stiles’s side, through thick and thin.

 

***

 

“Hey,” Boyd says, “Catch.”

It’s a party trick they’ve perfected by now. Boyd throws something, probably heavy, and Allison catches it like it’s nothing, because for her it probably is. “Is that it?” she always laughs.

They all ignore it now; they’ve all seen what Allison can do. But this time there is no echoing ring of Allison’s laugh, just the soft sound of the wind being knocked out of someone. The dull thud of a body meeting the ground.

Boyd gets to her first because only Boyd was watching. Clothes spill out of the black garbage bag lying next to Allison on the community center floor. They were supposed to be sorting donations for a coat drive.

“I’m fine,” Allison coughs, pushing herself up on her elbows. “I’m fine.” Boyd has his arm on her elbow, helping the best way he can, guilt writ clear across his face.

Scott takes a step forward. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Allison smiles weakly at him. “He just caught me off guard.”

“You sure?” Scott asks again, and before he can take another step forward, Allison is on her feet.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she spits out, wrenching her arm away from Boyd. “Would you just trust me for once?” And then she’s gone, storming out of the room looking like a ghost possessed.

Lydia’s on her heels before anyone can even think to move.

“Hey—” Scott starts to protest, but Stiles puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes his head. Whatever’s going on, Stiles knows that Scott’s personal brand of optimism isn’t going to fix it.

 

***

 

Scott and Derek are both leaders in their own way: Derek goes out there and demands respect, even though he does fuckall to deserve it, while Scott is kind and steady and determined, winning everyone over with his goddamn Labrador heart. But Jesus H. Christ, neither one of them can plan their way out of a paper bag. Stiles will be eternally and forever grateful for Lydia.

“Her power is fading too,” Lydia explains, pragmatic, like this is a group project and she doesn’t want anyone messing up her perfect GPA. “She noticed she wasn’t as strong anymore before we noticed the fading.”

The only reason Scott doesn’t say something pathetic and counterproductive like, “Why didn’t she tell me?” is because he’s too busy glaring at Stiles who mercilessly shut that shit down with a swift under-the-table kick to the shins.

“How fast is it happening?” Derek asks. On occasion he actually proves his worth as the only 100 percent bona fide adult in the group. But never enough to make up for the fact that his brand of supervising is mostly just shouting and then being conspicuously absent when anyone has any real questions.

Lydia shrugs. “Slow, at first, I think. Like she could pick up a refrigerator with one hand but not a car.”

“And now?” Erica prompts.

“And now she gets knocked over by industrial strength garbage bags filled with ugly, reject winter coats.” She smiles, but it’s bitter and sarcastic and only going to serve to prompt a fight with Erica, which honestly Lydia is probably looking for. Stiles knows that Lydia only looks perfect—that it takes a lot to put on her Lydia Martin battle armor in the morning and that she always used to take out her baseline of anger and frustration through petty fights with Jackson. But Jackson’s in London, which is only adding to this whole mess.

“I hate to be that guy,” Stiles says, not hating to be that guy at all, “but is anyone else fading away and/or losing their powers?”

Everyone looks around uncomfortably at each other before Scott volunteers, “I shifted last night.” He shrugs. “I set the smoke detector off cooking bacon in the microwave and it freaked me out.”

Isaac fades in and out of sight and says, “I’ve still got it.”

Boyd mumbles, “I healed my baby sister’s broken wrist last week,” and no one snaps about keeping their powers on the down low because Alicia is seven and everyone in probation is old enough to understand how fucked the health care system is.

“I was pulled over for speeding on the weekend. It worked then,” Erica confesses, totally blasé like her probation worker isn’t sitting two feet to her left.

But Derek isn’t looking at her. He’s looking directly at his feet, shoulders rounded like he’s trying to make himself smaller. “I’m still healing,” he admits. “But no one’s stabbed me in a while, so I don’t know if anything’s changed.” It’s his normal, deadpan Derek voice, like he thinks if he just uses the right inflection no one will be able to tell that he’s trying to avoid Lydia’s gaze like the plague.

“Nothing’s changed,” Lydia says voice soft, answering Stiles’s question and Derek’s unspoken one, ever efficient.

Stiles flatly refuses to let a productive conversation get derailed by whatever emotional trauma Lydia and Derek are trying to save each other from, because that shit is toxic and a downer and should have been discussed at least a month ago. He claps his hands and says, “Okay, just Allison then. Boyd, you noticed getting your power, what, like, a hot second after Allison got hers?” Boyd nods and Stiles barrels on, “It’s been _way more_ than a hot second since Allison started to go all invisible woman on us, so I think it’s safe to say that whatever’s causing this ghost shit is new and independent of the storm.”

“Stiles is right,” Lydia says, “as much as I’m loathe to admit it.” She’s not loathe at all. Stiles knows that Lydia likes him best, now.

Right on schedule, Isaac chimes in with a cheerfully demoralizing, “Awesome. So we just have a new thing or person that’s trying to kill us.”

And, well, Stiles hates to admit it, but Isaac’s not wrong.

 

***

 

“We’ve always managed to survive before,” Allison says, which is a really positive way of saying _we killed my aunt that time she tried to kidnap and torture us to coerce Derek into handing over his family’s apparently considerable fortune_. “I’m not worried,” she adds, white knuckling her Nalgene. And she must be almost powerless now, because the bottle barely protests under her grip.

Boyd doesn’t look so inspired. “We barely survived before. And that’s when we knew who was trying to kill us.”

Allison puts her water bottle down and very carefully says, “Whatever’s happening to me, I’m not going lying down.”

There was a time in Stiles’s life when that would have been enough, but his mother refused to go lying down and died upside down in a burning car, a piece of stray metal in her gut. Derek refused to go lying down and Kate still technically killed him.

Stiles knows that there is nothing to say to someone grimly fighting their own death because nothing will change that punchline, so for once in his life he stays silent. Scott, who’s been standing beside her the entire time, takes her hand, a sign of solidarity and love. Really, it’s all they have.

 

***

 

Because Allison fading away isn’t terrible enough, Matt starts eating lunch with them instead of taking pretentious black and white shots of the locker room or whatever it is he used to do when they were on break.

"Seriously, doesn't he have anything better to do?" Stiles asks Erica. He has suspicions that Erica is slowly accepting that they might be some form of friends. "Like, what about real friends. Does he have any?"

Matt awkwardly clears his throat, sitting not three feet away. "It's a photojournalism class. I need the journalism and not just the photos."

Allison points out, “It’s not like we have anything better to do, either,” but because she's not actually a traitor, doesn't spare Matt a sympathetic glance. Instead, she playfully kicks Stiles under the table and asks, “What is it that Boyd’s always telling you?”

It’s hard to stay mad in the face of those dimples, so Stiles relents. “Boyd is friends with Isaac. Boyd is friends with _Derek_. Boyd doesn’t count.”

Erica digs her elbow into Stiles’s ribs for that. To be fair, she’s a lot gentler about it than she used to be, but it still hurts. “ _Boyd_ has better taste than you,” she points out, removing her elbow from Stiles’s person and then handing over her bag of SunChips that she abused her powers to get even though she hates the harvest cheddar ones.

Stiles thinks that if it had been Erica instead of Lydia who left him devastated at the third-grade spelling bee, coolly winning and then ignoring his existence for the next seven years, he would have easily worshipped the ground she walked on for years instead. His tastes run toward the mean but secretly decent, and he doesn’t think that’ll change any time soon.

“Yeah, but Boyd doesn’t like him either,” Stiles argues.

“I’m still here,” Matt points out. “I can still hear you.”

He’s ignored in favor of Stiles and Erica trying to rank how much Boyd likes things, a hopeless task since Boyd doesn’t tell Stiles shit and Erica is a pathological liar. Allison and Scott egg them on and no one pays Matt any attention at all. Not even Allison.

 

***

 

Derek is at Stiles’s house that night. He’s in dark jeans and a dark Henley and they’re both too tight. Stiles wants to ask, “When was the last time you went shopping, bro? Was it before you hit puberty and sprung all those totally superfluous muscles?” He would, of course, leave out the part where he wants to lick all those muscles. Stiles thinks that if they were somewhere else—hiding by the dumpsters, in Derek's office, his cruiser, anywhere but here under his father's speculative gaze—he would actually ask. He thinks Derek would do that thing with his eyebrows before telling Stiles to shove off, and it would be great.

But he doesn’t, and in the blooming awkward silence his dad explains, "Deputy Hale was just dropping off some paperwork.”

"Stilinski." Derek nods at Stiles, stone faced and bland, his resting face. Stiles thinks he should smile more.

Once, Stiles kissed Derek and tasted blood on his lips. There is no need for this to be awkward. "Yo,” he says, trying to convey in one word how much he thinks this is bullshit. It must work because Derek risks something very nearly a smile.

The sheriff looks between them like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on. “Well, thanks for dropping this off, Derek.” He holds up the manila folder nearly overflowing with paper, which explains what Derek was doing yesterday locked in his cruiser with his shitty county laptop, a ream of paper, and the single largest coffee Stiles had ever seen.

“Not a problem” Derek shrugs.

“Well, I’m going to leave before this gets any more exciting.” Stiles excuses himself, leaving his dad and Derek to cop business before he says something that’s going to lead to yet another lecture about _tone_ and _you’re not a kid anymore, Stiles_.

It’s weird to think that Derek knows Stiles’s dad in ways that Stiles never will, that Derek knows things about Stiles that his dad can never know. It’s weird thinking about the way lives overlap and chance encounters and that even if Stiles had never been arrested for trespassing, he might still have met Derek, just later on and through his dad, and Stiles has no idea if that would be better or worse. But it doesn’t matter now. Stiles has never done well dwelling on possibility.

 

***

 

Because Stiles lives badly and because his life has turned into a parody of itself, Stiles is in no way surprised when he hears Derek knocking on his bedroom window five minutes after he heard him say goodbye to his dad downstairs.

“Is this a thing we do now?” Stiles asks, unlocking his window and letting Derek in. “Because I kind of thought we were whatever the probation equivalent of work friends is.”

Clearly Stiles is losing his charm, because Derek doesn’t even grace him with one of those great, over-the-top eye rolls. Instead he just stands awkwardly by the window and admits, “I don’t think you’re wrong. About Matt.”

“That he doesn’t have any real friends? Or that he is putting a freaky amount of effort into his photojournalism class?”

That earns him an eye roll, and Stiles does his best not to smile. “That he might be evil,” Derek huffs, like it pains him to admit that Stiles is right about something. And, well, Stiles would gloat about it because he loves nothing more than to be right, but maybe not so much this time.

“Well,” Stiles says. “Fuck.”

 

***

 

There’s not a lot to say, really, but what needs to be said is shitty and uncomfortable and Stiles can’t stop picturing the way that Derek’s face only ever looks peaceful when he’s dead. But Derek stays late into the night and they say it all anyways—how they know they’re not the only ones the storm gave powers to; how Matt has always liked Allison best; how even Derek can see the way Matt has worked his way in between Scott and Allison, like a sliver they can’t pick out.

At some point, Derek rests his hand on Stiles’s knee, like he’s trying to settle him, weigh him down and keep him from vibrating out of his skin with anxiety. “It’s going to be fine,” he says, voice soft like it is in the early mornings and after long days.

“You can’t know that.” Derek doesn’t take his hand away and Stiles is so grateful it almost hurts. “Dumb luck has to run out eventually, right?”

Derek smiles ruefully. “Maybe not yet.”

And Stiles wants to ask how Derek is the optimist right now, when Matt is stealing Allison away, when Derek is very probably going to die again. He thinks maybe it’s not optimism. Maybe Derek feels exactly as he does now—that it doesn’t matter what happens, because they’re friends, for better or worse, and this is Allison, and they’re going to do whatever they can to stop it.

 

***

 

Lydia calls in the middle of the night.

“Are you okay?” Stiles asks, going from asleep to awake with a cold surge of adrenaline. “Lydia? Is everything okay?”

She sobs into the phone. “What the hell did you do, Stiles?” her voice is cracked and raw, like she’s been screaming for hours, like it was during the bad days. “What the hell did you do?”

She doesn’t say anything else, not for hours, until the sky turns pink with morning light. Lydia just sobs into the phone and Stiles sits on the other end and listens, curses his stupid fucking curfew. He wishes he knew what he did, but he worries he already does.

 

***

 

“If he wasn’t going to die before, he definitely is now,” Lydia says in the morning, prim and perfect. Her makeup today is flawless—dark circles covered with expert application—and she’s armed with a venti caramel macchiato and an aggressively short skirt.

It’s Saturday and they’re sitting in the back of Stiles’s jeep in the parking lot of the Preserve, back hatch open wide and legs hanging out. They needed neutral ground, and here, with families and couples coming armed with picnic baskets and hiking boots, no one pays them any attention.

Stiles’s heart sinks like a stone, but he can’t help but wonder, “How is Derek _more dead_ now? How can someone who is going to die but hasn’t yet be even more dead?”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “A freak hail storm means Scott can turn into a Labrador, and you’re concerned with how dead someone can be.”

“I just didn’t think it came on a sliding scale.” Stiles shrugs. He’s pretty familiar with death, even before community service.

“It doesn’t,” she tells him, firm, and then pauses, takes a sip of her coffee. Stiles knows Lydia, knows she’s not thirsty, just buying time to figure out what she’s going to say next. “Ever since the storm, Derek’s just felt off,” she says at last. “With Kate and Jennifer and Peter I _knew_ , but Derek has always felt like a maybe. Last night—” she takes another sip, “—I knew. And I knew you changed it.” She doesn’t meet his eyes, just fiddles with the cardboard holder of her cup.

There is something settling under Stiles’s skin, a feeling he can’t quite explain and doesn’t know what to do with. He thinks that Derek can’t die. He thinks that if Derek does, it will be all his fault. There is one thing he knows for sure. “Well if I changed it,” he tells Lydia, “I’ll just change it back.”

“It’s not that easy.”

Stiles shrugs. Nothing good ever is.

 

***

 

There is a bridge on the way out of town that has been under construction for as long as Stiles can remember, and buried in the soft dirt at the base of the northwest pylon are the bodies of three people.

He knows that Scott still feels guilty every time they drive over it. He knows Scott has dreams of blood and dirt and Lydia’s screams. Stiles doesn’t. Stiles did what he had to do to survive. There’s no shame in that.

 

***

 

Peter was the best and worst of everyone who has tried to kill them.

“Have you ever met anyone who doesn’t want to kill you?” Stiles asks Derek, hiding behind the dumpster with him and Erica.

Peter is on the prowl, gone power mad from the storm, looking to hurt someone because he can. Kate is still out there, somewhere, gone off to lick her wounds and try again. They don’t know yet that when she comes back, she’ll bring Jennifer with her. Peter won’t be alive then, but Stiles doesn’t know that either.

“No one wanted to kill me before I met you,” Derek huffs, and Erica nearly ruins their cover stifling a laugh.

Inside the community center they can hear Lydia screaming from where Peter locked her up—said that he had something special planned for her—but there’s no way to tell whose name she’s screaming, if she’s screaming one at all.

“Not to ruin the moment,” Erica says, “but does anyone have a plan that doesn’t involve me flashing a megalomaniac psychopath?” They tried that already. Turns out hypnoboobs only work on people who like girls, and it turns out that the only person Peter likes is himself.

“Allison could punch him really hard?” Stiles suggests.

Derek stands up from his crouch. “No,” he says, moving away from the dumpster. “He’s my uncle. I’ll deal with this.”

To win a grudge match with a superpowered crazy person you don’t have to be stronger than them, you just have to live longer. Derek, leather jacket ripped to shreds, blood crusting the corners of his mouth, can live longer than all of them.

 

***

 

It turns out that Stiles saying, "Derek thinks Matt's evil too," is not as big a boost to group morale as he thought it would be.

"Didn't Derek used to bone Kate Argent?" Isaac asks like he’s making a salient point or some shit. "Isn’t that part of why she tried to kill us?"

Stiles shoots him a dirty look. "I am, like, ninety-five percent certain that Derek and Matt are _not_ making the beast with two backs."

"Only ninety-five?" Erica asks. "What’s the other five?"

"Well, Derek is very, very pretty and has a history of terrible romantic choices," Stiles explains. This much, he thinks, should be obvious.

Boyd doesn't look like he agrees. "Pretty sure Matt is straight and has it bad for Allison."

"Ugh, yes, thank you,” Stiles says, happy that someone in the group has some sense. “I mean, I’m just saying, Derek is pretty enough to make someone reconsider how dedicated they are to their sexual orientation. _But_ Matt has it bad for Allison. _And_ all this started after Matt showed up. _And_ it’s only happening to Allison." He does a flourish with his hands that he thinks pretty accurately conveys _ergo Matt is evil_.

Erica, Isaac, Boyd, and even Scott (the traitor) stare blankly back at him.

"So you think that Matt is making Allison disappear because he likes her?" Scott asks, somehow managing to sound skeptical and supportive at the same time. Like he doesn’t believe him, but maybe given time and some flow charts he might.

Stiles huffs. "Not just me. Me and Derek."

"Not for nothing,” Isaac says, “but I think I’d actually believe you if Derek and Matt _were_ banging. Derek’s dick is a great radar for evil." Stiles honestly has no idea why Scott likes Isaac, because Isaac is the biggest asshole he has ever met, and Jackson once locked Stiles in a locker in middle school.

Erica sniggers and even Boyd looks like he’s trying not to smile and that’s it, Stiles doesn’t need to take this shit.

“Alright, fine. Everything’s fine. Allison is just a little vitamin D deficient and Matt is a totally normal human being. I just hope it’s not one of you next.”

Stiles is out of the room before Scott can convince him to stay.

 

***

 

Derek is by the dumpsters because he always is.

“Where’s Lydia?” Stiles asks. He doesn’t particularly want to talk to her, but he doesn’t know how to say what he needs to to Derek.

“With Allison.” Derek answers. He’s slouching, but he still looks as tense and miserable as Stiles feels. There’s a cigarette, unlit, between his fingers. “I think they’re filling the vending machines.”

Technically, they’re not supposed to fill the vending machines without supervision because it’s generally agreed that young offenders are not to be trusted in situations like that, but Stiles isn’t really in the mood to point that out today. If Derek wants to get fired for being the worst parole office ever, that’s his prerogative.

Stiles goes to find Lydia and he is almost back inside the building when Derek says, “Scott will come around.”

Stiles stops just outside the community center doors. “That doesn’t mean we can fix this.”

“We still have to try,” Derek says. Stiles has heard those exact words from Scott a hundred times about a hundred different things—trying out for lacrosse and high school dates and trying to stop Kate. The words sound different coming from Derek. Scott says it the same way every time—with upbeat determination, a glint to his eye, and hope in his heart—but there’s no hope in Derek, no sadness. They’ll do it because they have to, because the other option is unthinkable. It doesn’t matter that it’s very probably going to kill him.

Stiles doesn’t go to find Lydia; he can’t leave Derek looking all pathetic by the dumpsters, ready to martyr himself because for an attractive human being with a decent job and a secret family fortune, he has absolutely no self-worth.

“Cheer up, buttercup,” Stiles chides, kicking Derek gently in the leg.

Derek kicks back. “Okay, mom,” he says, a laugh at the edge of his voice.

Stiles smiles and Derek smiles and they stay there, hidden away together by the dumpsters, the two of them against the world.

 

***

 

Scott finds them there an hour later; they’re throwing pebbles at the dumpsters, working on their aim and laughing like the world isn’t about to end.

“I don’t know if you’re right,” he says and both Stiles and Derek freeze. Stiles’s heart stutters, feeling caught in the act, but Scott ignores them with aplomb and continues. “But it’s worth a shot and I trust you.”

Besides the fact that Stiles has never managed to stay pissed off at Scott longer than four hours, he trusts Scott too, no question.

“Well, then I hope you have a plan, because Derek and I have already done used our cunning and good looks. Time for you regular-looking folk to pull your weight.” Stiles swears on all that is holy that underneath the beard he’s rocking, Derek blushes. It makes Stiles’s heart do something stupid and it makes him want to do something reckless, like hold Derek’s hand.

“Man, I know you think I’m hot.” Scott smiles happily and holds out his hand to pull Stiles up, breaking the moment. “I talked to Erica, and I think we have a plan.”

 

***

 

Stiles knows that the plan isn’t going to work—their plans never do; a version of this plan has failed once before—but they’re out of options and all they really have at this point is hope.

“Wish me luck, boys,” Erica says with a wink, unzipping her jumpsuit enough to show that, today, her bra is electric blue leopard print.

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Just do it, Reyes.”

Erica leaves with a swish of her hips, leaving the rest of them huddled in the locker room, hunkered down like they’re waiting for a storm to pass.

But there is no storm. Minutes pass and then an hour. Erica never comes back.

 

***

 

The halls of the community center are empty.

Stiles can’t hear anything but the sound of their feet and it’s making his skin itch. “See?” he says, in the echoing silence. “Matt is _super evil_.”

“Not helping, Stiles,” Derek grumbles, slinging his arm around Stiles’s shoulder, putting a hand over his mouth and pulling him close.

There was a time when Derek would push Stiles away, instead. He would grumble _Stop it, Stiles_ , and, _When you’re done being a child, Stiles_ and push him away, into lockers and trees and Scott. Stiles doesn’t remember when that changed, but he doesn’t really care. It’s warm here, pulled up next to Derek’s chest. It feels safe in a way that Stiles knows is a lie.

“She’s not dead,” Lydia tells them.

No one says anything after that. No one’s naive enough to find that thought comforting. Not anymore.

 

***

 

They find a Polaroid picture on the floor, Erica’s wicked grin smiling back at them.

“That’s what she was wearing today,” Allison says.

“Matt could have dropped it,” Isaac points out.

Boyd takes the Polaroid carefully from Allison’s hands. He traces the line of her jaw carefully with one finger. “We need to find Erica and then Matt.”

Stiles thinks he can hear the soft click of a camera shutter, but he can’t be sure.

 

***

 

“Wait,” Boyd says. They’re in Derek’s office, looking at the coffee-stained floorplans he has stashed in his file drawer because Lydia had said _finding them would be easier if we had a map of this shithole_. And Stiles had said _Derek has one in his office_ , firmly avoiding Scott’s gaze because Stiles shouldn’t know that.

Stiles expects Boyd to have found something—a corner of the community center they’ve never hidden in before, some place that Erica could have stowed away so that she could jump out later and laugh at them, “You think Matt kidnapped me? Get over yourself, nerds,”—but Boyd isn’t looking at the blueprints. He’s looking at the picture of Erica.

“She’s moved,” Boyd says and if it were anyone else in the group, Stiles would call bullshit. But Boyd doesn’t ever waste his time with bullshit.

Lydia pulls the photograph from his hands. “Are you sure?” she asks, peering down at it. Stiles can already tell from Lydia’s face, lips slightly pursed, a hairline wrinkle between her brows, that Lydia is sure. She passes the picture to Stiles, something cold and mechanical about her movements.

Erica’s screaming now, her mouth and eyes wide open, her hair a golden mane. Stiles can feel everyone peering over his shoulder to get a look. Stiles can feel Derek’s breath hot on his neck and he can’t stop himself from thinking, _he’s still alive he’s still alive he’s still alive_ , like if he keeps thinking it, then it can never change.

“So what, Matt put Erica in this picture?” Scott asks.

Isaac gently knocks him with his elbow. “You turn into a dog, dude.”

“How do we get her _out_?” Derek asks, and trust him to be a grown up at the worst fucking time.

There is the soft click of a camera shutter, Stiles is sure of it this time, and then Matt says, “You don’t.”

 

***

 

Isaac is there and then he’s not.

“We don’t need Mr. Invisible running around, ruining our fun.” Matt shakes the Polaroid before dropping it. It floats softly to the floor, Isaac’s face slowly developing on the film.

“You know you’re not supposed to shake those, dude,” Stiles hears himself say, can’t think of anything else to do. “It can distort the image.”

Matt’s face turns into the parody of a frown. “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” There is a click and a flash, and then Boyd is gone. Matt drops the picture to the ground without ceremony. “Is that any better?”

Stiles doesn’t realize he’s taken a step back until he feels Derek’s hand on the small of his back. “Not really, no.”

“Too bad.” Matt grins, mouth like a shark. He holds up his camera again. “Now, who wants to be next?”

It turns out, like most men who are given power, Matt’s a coward at heart—both Scott and Derek lunge for him at the same time and Matt is off like a shot, disappearing down the halls of the community center like a ghost.

 

***

 

Allison gathers up the Polaroid’s of Erica and Isaac and Boyd—of their _friends_ —and Stiles can see the outline of Boyd’s face through Allison’s hands.

“Is this what’s happening to me?” She asks, her voice sounds as hollow as her bones are now.

“It’s what he’s doing to you,” Lydia tells her, firm, sounding like that girl Stiles fell in love with all those years ago. She pulls Allison into a fierce hug and vows, “We’re going to stop him, Allie. We’re going to get you back and we’re going to get them back.”

Stiles turns away because this moment is not for him; he turns away because he can feel the lie in his bones, just another one weighing him down like lead.

Somewhere in the halls of the community center, Matt is hiding. Stiles can hear Scott and Derek searching for him. Stiles also remembers what Lydia had promised and part of him hopes they never find Matt, that he disappears like one of his photographs, just as long as Stiles gets to keep Derek.

 

***

 

Scott and Derek come back empty handed.

“Enough,” Allison decides. Her tears are dried and she’s holding Scott’s hand. “This is about me. I’m not going to let Matt hurt any more of my friends.” There is something bright and alive in Allison’s fading eyes. There is something in the line of her jaw that reminds Stiles of Kate; that makes him think he understands why Derek fell in love with her. “I’m going to end it,” she promises, and lets go of Scott’s hand.

 

***

 

“Stop it, Matt,” Allison calls down empty hallways. “Come out and we can talk about this.”

“Why?” asks Matt, behind them all of a sudden. “What’s there to talk about?”

And Allison must be braver than them all, because she takes a step forward. “Leave them alone, Matt. This is about me.”

Matt narrows his eyes. “Oh no, this stopped being about you a long time ago, Allison. When you chose him over me. When you chose _freaks_ who turn into dogs and turn invisible and can control _cheese_ over _me_.”

“That’s no reason to kill my friends,” she tells him and Matt laughs.

“Oh no, they’re not dead yet.” He holds up his Polaroid camera. “But if I break this they will be.”

Derek and Scott lunge for Matt the same time Allison does. They lunge for Matt the same time Lydia starts to scream.

 

***

 

Stiles knows that Scott can’t remember anything about his time as a dog, but Stiles is, like, 99 percent certain that dog-Scott can remember being human.  If he’s turned into a dog to avoid a conversation, he’ll run away as a dog as well. If Scott’s scared, his doggy alter ego will bark and growl. If he transforms from excitement, he’ll wag his tail and lick everyone’s faces.

When he’s a Labrador, Scott likes Stiles and belly rubs and following Allison around, taking afternoon naps at her feet. As a dog, he likes to bark at motorcycles more than cars and he’ll gnaw on any wayward lacrosse equipment if given the chance. As a dog, he still doesn’t like Derek.

As a dog, that first time when it surprised everyone, Scott growled and he growled and he bit Derek when he tried to move in close.

Stiles has never before seen Scott angry, properly furious, as a person or a dog. But Scott’s angry now. Honestly, Stiles didn’t think Scott had it in him.

 

***

 

Scott charges, hackles raised and snarling like a junkyard dog and Matt panics. He kicks out, tries to get away from the snarling dog and tries to pull Allison close all at once, but Derek is there, getting between Matt and Allison. Derek is there and—that big, noble, martyring idiot—he puts a hand up to keep Allison away and she goes flying, half invisible and almost too weak to stand.

For one brief, horrible moment, everyone goes still. And then Scott turns. Derek hurt Allison, Scott’s dog brain knows that much, and Derek is very probably immortal, but Scott is near rabid and out for blood.

Allison is staggering to her feet and Stiles is jumping in, trying to pull Scott off Derek, and Lydia is screaming, voice raw and tears streaming down her face. No one’s paying attention to Matt.

“You think you can beat me?” Stiles hears Matt say. There is blood, there is so much blood, and Derek is dying again on the community center floor, his neck ripped out by Scott’s teeth. “Do you really think that you’re better than me?” Derek is bleeding on the floor and then he’s not. Scott is killing their parole officer, and then he’s gone. Lydia finally stops screaming.

Matt holds up a photograph—from where Stiles stands, all he can see is blood and teeth—and he smiles. “What you don’t get is that if I can’t have Allison, no one can.”

Allison punches him in the face. She may be weak but she’s mad as hell, and Matt stumbles. She gets in another and Matt goes down like a ton of bricks. Months ago, before the storm when they were all just young offenders, this would have been enough, but they’ve changed, for better or for worse. Matt goes down and Allison kicks him in the head, hard. He doesn’t try to get up again.

 

***

 

No one talks about the impossible angle of Matt’s neck—Allison, Lydia, and Stiles all know what it means, all know that the only person who has ever come back from that is Derek.

Stiles picks up Matt’s last photograph from the floor and they all huddle around to look at it. Derek’s eyes are open and unfocused, Scott’s bloody maw clamped around his throat.

“He’s dead,” Lydia says, her voice raw from screaming.

“But he can heal,” Allison says. “That’s what he does. He gets better.” Her hands, Stiles thinks, are more solid than they were a moment before, but he doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t matter. Derek is dead. Scott is a dog. All of their friends are still trapped inside Matt’s haunted photography.

“Not if he stays in the picture, he can’t,” Stiles hears himself tell her. There is a thought forming in his head—one of his wild, badly thought out ideas that just sits right in his gut, like it’s going to end in sirens and his dad’s disappointed face but he just has to do it.

“How long until it’s permanent?” Allison asks but Lydia stays silent. Stiles knows that she hates not having the answer, that admitting she doesn’t know is akin to failure for Lydia Martin. Today has already been too much; Lydia cannot fail now.

Stiles takes Matt’s camera out of his hand and doesn’t think about how his body is still warm but he hasn’t blinked in minutes now, hasn’t taken a breath since Allison kicked him. “You’re coming back now. Now that Matt’s—” Stiles has killed so many people, hasn’t shut up a day in his life, but he still has a hard time with these words— “Well, you’re coming back now. If Matt’s dead, his powers gone,” Stiles tells them. “It’s the only way.”

_What are the chances this will work_ , Stiles thinks and as he throws the camera to the ground he realizes he knows the answer. Impossibly slim. They know that when a person dies their power dies with them. Kate died and her fires went out.

But it’s been a long day and Stiles is desperate. Matt’s camera smashes into the ground, shatters into pieces, and all Stiles can do is think, _please, please work, please don’t be dead_ just like he did when his mother was dying.

And then, suddenly, Stiles feels something in the universe shift. It shouldn’t work. Stiles has never been granted miracles. But it does.

 

***

 

It feels like deja vu. Scott and Derek suddenly flesh and blood again, except Scott has let go of Derek’s neck in obvious doggy confusion. Allison is there in a heartbeat, pulling him away, wiping the blood from his muzzle.

In the distance, Stiles can hear Erica and Isaac and Boyd finding themselves, finding each other. On the floor lies Derek, dead and bloody. Again.

“You have to be alive,” Stiles tells him, kneeling on the floor, Derek's blood soaking into his jeans. Lydia kneels beside him and holds his hand, and Stiles wants to cry, he loves her so much.

He loves Derek too, he thinks, finally putting a name to that yawning ache he feels whenever he thinks of Derek. He thinks of Derek all the time now, in the way he used to think of Lydia, but different. Stiles never knew Lydia’s heart, but he thinks he knows Derek’s.

“Please,” Stiles asks the universe, just one last time. He thinks of the chances that Derek could come back from this and knows they are slim. He thinks that’s complete horseshit because Derek shouldn’t have to keep dying to keep other people living.

_Please don’t be dead_ , he thinks again and pulls on the same feeling as before, and this time he’s sure of it—he can _feel_ when the universe rearranges itself. Can feel the probability of Derek being alive and not just an imprint of Matt’s final photograph change from _impossible_ to _the only way_.

On the floor of the community center, Derek coughs, his throat closing up before Stiles’s eyes.

From somewhere behind Stiles’s shoulder, her voice like a ghost’s, Lydia asks, “Stiles, what did you do?”

 

***

 

It's easy, what Stiles did—he looked at his chances of success and pushed until the universe gave way, gave back what Matt had taken. But really, Stiles has _no fucking clue_ what he did.

 

***

 

“Probability manipulation,” Lydia decides, announces it like it’s the winning answer on _Jeopardy_.

Everyone stares blankly back at her. There is blood all down Scott’s front. There is blood all over Derek’s everything. Erica and Isaac and Boyd are huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, as distant from the rest of the world as ever.

“Probability manipulation?” Isaac repeats dumbly, eyebrows raised.

Lydia’s shoulders slump a little. “It’s either that or reality manipulation.” She still sounds her normal, superior self. “I chose the lesser of two evils.”

Derek hasn’t looked at Stiles since he came back. Stiles can’t stop looking at him, marveling that he’s alive when he should be dead.

“It figures,” Erica grouses. “Stilinski didn’t have a power and now he has the most dangerous one of all.” There is something like a smile playing at the corner of her lips; Erica has always liked dangerous things. “You’re just a show off, aren’t you?”

Stiles’s hands haven’t stopped shaking since he realized what he’d done. Probability manipulation sits right under his skin. “I think you’re confusing me with Jackson. Remember him? Shiny car and a face you wanted to punch? Good with a variety of cheeses?”

Erica smiles at him, wicked.

“Are we going to do something about Matt?” Boyd asks before Erica can say something unhelpful.

Derek speaks for the first time. “I’ll get my car.”

 

***

 

They’re practically professionals, at this point, when it comes to making bodies disappear. Stiles figures that they’ll probably never get the stains out of the back of Derek’s mom mobile, but Derek is also a cop. They forget that a lot. He'll be the last one they investigate.

Stiles also forgets that he should probably feel bad or morally conflicted about this. But as he packs down Matt’s grave—under the bridge with all the others—with the back of his shovel all he can think is good riddance to bad rubbish.

 

***

 

He goes home and lies to his dad. He’s practically a professional at that too. This, however, he feels guilty about.

 

***

 

Stiles spends the night flipping coins, like some sort of bad _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern_ reenactment. It’s surprisingly difficult, at first. The chances are fifty-fifty, but Stiles realizes he has to _want_ it. Just like he wanted Derek to be alive, an impossibly large feeling for something as simple as flipping coins.

It’s two am, Stiles’s eyes like sandpaper every time he blinks, by the time he’s desperate enough to just want _heads already_. And then it’s as easy as breathing and he lands on heads every time. It all feels like too much, and Stiles crawls into his bed, tired of the world for now.

 

***

 

In the early morning, Stiles gets dropped off to community service and his dad says the same thing he has said every day, like a mantra or a prayer, “You’re doing good, son,” like maybe it'll erase the ugly dead silence between them.

The words hang heavy this morning, but Stiles is not entirely sure his dad is wrong. Stiles might not be doing good, but he’s confident he’s doing what’s right.

Stiles shrugs, the weight of his dad’s love a burden and a comfort. “Thanks, dad.”

 

***

 

Derek is still not looking at Stiles, even though Stiles brings coffee and kindly does not point out that the man in Cora’s latest email update is probably not a platonic travelling buddy.

When he says, "Thank you," however, Stiles thinks he isn't just talking about the coffee.

 

***

 

Erica and Isaac and Boyd roll in like they always do—appearing in a cloud of leather and knocking on Derek’s door, looking expectant until he stands up, unclips his badge, and pulls out his pack of smokes and lighter from his desk.

“Just because you take your badge off, dude, doesn’t mean you’re not still in charge of us,” Stiles tells him, like he tells him every day. He refuses to let this become awkward between them.

Normally, Derek just frowns at him like he’s trying not to smile because he’d rather stick a knife in his own eye than admit he has feelings in front of his three favorite deviants. Today, he puts a hand on Stiles’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the soft flannel of his shirt, and Stiles’s entire body snaps to attention.

“Behave,” he tells Stiles, something like mischief in his face, looking at him for the very first time since Matt.

Stiles can feel the imprint of Derek’s hand on his shoulder for the rest of the day. It feels like victory.

 

***

 

Eventually, Lydia and Allison and Scott filter in for the day and they get to work doing what they always do after someone tries to kill them—scrubbing away the evidence. It’s not technically part of their job, but Erica’s hypnoboobs can only get them so far, especially if it’s Deputy Tara or any other boob-adverse cop that comes around.

“Do you think Jackson has to deal with shit like this anymore?” Stiles wonders aloud, dumping bleach into a bucket under Lydia’s careful supervision.

“I think,” Lydia says, a chill to her voice and one of these days Stiles is going to learn to think before he speaks, “that it doesn’t matter. He left us and now he’s alone.”

Stiles figures that she’s probably rights. He also figures that that’s the nicest thing that Lydia has said about any of them—admitting that need each other even if they’re not all sure if they even like each other.

“I don’t know,” Boyd disagrees, something like a smile on his face, “It’s probably a lot quieter without Stiles around.”

Erica and Isaac laugh and even Allison and Scott crack a smile so Stiles figures he can take the blow to his ego just this once.

 

***

 

Erica corners him after a lunch. “Don’t be a dick about it, Stiles,” she warns, shoving him into the lockers like the good little Derek protégé she is.

Stiles has spent a good chunk of his life hearing this exact same thing, but usually he knows what the other person is talking about. “Um, what? What am I being a dick about? Did I forget your birthday? Because Isaac said it wasn’t for another month.” Stiles wouldn’t put it past Isaac to provide misinformation to cause just this kind of situation, however.

“Derek,” she says, loosening her grip on him slightly. “I know you wouldn’t make him do anything gross, but I’m not sure you’re smart enough to work out that he _wants_ to.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stiles tells her.

Erica rolls her eyes at him like this conversation is physically paining her when, hello, he’s the one being manhandled by her. “Hypnoboobs never worked on him,” Erica says instead of anything useful. “You should ask him about it sometime.”

She leaves before Stiles can make her actually explain herself, and Stiles’s life is pretty weird on a daily basis, but that was _weird_.

 

***

 

He tries flipping coins again that night but it doesn’t work; he can think of something else he wants more than heads ten times in a row.

Around midnight his dad knocks on his door. “Can’t sleep?” he asks from the doorway. Ever since his mom died, Stiles’s dad has been good at giving Stiles his space. Some days he thinks he could drown in it. Most days he just wants to give his dad a hug, but they haven’t really done that since the funeral, with an exception made for high school graduation.

“I can’t stop thinking,” Stiles says, which is true enough.

“Anything in particular?”

Stiles shrugs and flips the coin again. Tails. “I don’t know. Community service. Life.” He drops his head back to rest against his bed. “What I’m going to do after community service.”

He doesn’t look up, but he can hear as his dad moves into his room and sits down in his wheely chair. “You’re going to go to college and become a productive member of society,” his dad says, completely deadpan. “And you’re going to fuck up again, kid, if that’s what you’re worried about. But that’s life. And the trick is to learn from it.”

When Stiles looks, his dad is smiling at him. “Thanks, dad,” he says and finds that he means it.

“Get some rest.” His dad shuts the door behind him when he leaves and Stiles thinks that even when things were complete shit, he never needed a power to know that his dad would always love him, through thick and thin.

He doesn’t really sleep that night, but he stops worrying about it.

 

***

 

“I’m not going to dinner Friday,” Lydia says, because she believes in carrying on in the most ruthless fashion imaginable. She’s not even looking at Stiles, but at her phone, picking out the perfect Instagram filter. “Derek gives me a headache.”

“That’s never going to change,” Stiles tells her. “He’s a terrible conversationalist who keeps getting himself killed.”

Lydia frowns at him. “It’s not like it’s mandatory, Stiles.”

“C’mon,” he cajoles. “It’ll be fun. Scott and Isaac are going to restart their wing-eating competition.” Stiles is not participating on the grounds that Isaac is a dickbag. Also, Stiles beat them so thoroughly at the fry-eating contest they both accused him of cheating.

"That's disgusting," she tells him firmly.

"So you'll come?"

She seems to settle on Brennan with an air of tired disdain. "Don't push your luck."

Stiles sits down next to her. “Don’t worry. I’m not giving Derek the satisfaction of dying for us.” He knocks his elbow against Lydia’s and ignores her displeased sigh. “I've worked too hard to keep him alive this long.”

“You’re so predictable.” She finishes uploading her picture and puts her phone away, takes Stiles’s hand in her own. “And so is he.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven?” Stiles asks, grin creeping onto his face.

Lydia rests her head on Stiles’s shoulder. “Maybe.”

Stiles knows Lydia now. He knows a yes when he hears one.

 

 


End file.
